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Building an INGO knife (a WIP thread)
- Thread starter Lagrange
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- ingo knife
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That there is funny. I am so glad I had already swallowed my coffee when I read it.
40calPUNISHER
Master
- Apr 23, 2008
- 2,333
- 48
I am the cheese
Plinker
- Sep 25, 2012
- 69
- 6
Do you use any form of a tempering process afterwards? I have not worked with stainless in my knife making.
Okay so it's been real cold and I as I get older I feel it more than I used to. So I have been hibernating and doing inside work while mother nature has her way with my garage/shop. Insulation is absolutely happening this year.
It's time to get some bolsters made and shaped so that while the blade is in heat treat we can finish them up and avoid down time.
I had a couple of pieces of 416 stainless left over from some previous jobs I had done so I thought I would use them up. These arent exactly the same size so I will need to grind them into shape.
I use a drop of gorilla glue to hold the two pieces together while I grind them. This will keep them perfectly aligned and they can easily be separated with a little persuasion.
You can see how the edges dont match up.
I'm using an old 80 grit belt to do the initial grinding. The coarse grit will get them even without heating them up too much. I dont worry about the heat for the metal's sake, but they sure can get hard to hold onto when they warm up.
After a little grinding I have them evened up.
Now we move to a finer grit belt to smooth out the edges a little. I'm not going for finish smooth here, I am just going to take the previous grind marks out and make it just a little smoother.
There, they are even and somewhat smooth. On to the next step.
I am going to use a trick I picked up from a fellow knife maker when I first started making knives. To hold the pieces of bolster where I want them on the blade I will use some carpet tape. It's relatively inexpensive and comes in different adhesive grades. I just grabbed some off the shelf at my local hardware store, I never paid much attention to what the adhesive hold was because I only need to have it hold long enought to mark the blade where I want my holes.
Here's a shot of the stuff. It comes in a roll and is double sided.
I always clean the surfaces of the parts I am going to tape together. First the bolsters and then later I will do the same thing with the blade.
You can see in the picture I already cut a piece of tape off the roll and have it sitting on the painters tape roll waiting to be applied.
It doesnt have to be pretty..which is a good thing because it can be difficult to stay exactly where you want it. It wants to stick to your fingers as much as the knife.
From here, we move to the drill press. Using the holes drilled in the knife blade we will transfer those same holes to the bolsters.
I drill through the bolster, then place a pin in the hole that I just drilled and then move to the next hole. After drilling the second hole I place another pin in that hole and move on to the last one. Even though I have the tape holding them together, there is still some wiggle left in the adhesion and it can be enough to throw your hole alignment off. The pins assure me that the correlation between the blade holes and the bolster holes remains constant. In the previous picture you can see that I have already drilled one hole and have it pinned and am drilling the next one.
It's really difficult to do some of this stuff and get decent pictures so please forgive my picture taking process.
Here the bolster is after drilling all the holes. Note the pins laying beside it on the bench. I always have a bunch of cut off's laying around just for this kind of thing.
Those pins were cut from a long piece of 1/8" brass rod that you can pick up from your local hardware store. They dont cost much and they also make great handle pins as well. They have brass rod in a variety of sizes.
The next thing I want to do is cut the forward face of the bolsters. This is an area that you have a little freedom in the way you want the bolster face to appear. I believe it makes a big difference in how the knife looks based on what shape the bolster takes on. It's kind of like putting mag wheels on dads car. The wheels make all the difference.
In this case I have determined to follow our original design and cut them angular and have the lower face follow the plunge line in the knife blade.
Once you have the bolsters cut you want to do a little rounding on the edges. I like to push the platen back on my grinder and use what is called a slack belt approach. Doin it this way allows the belt to contour to a roundness, and that's what I'm after.
I didnt get any pictures of the grinding process due to a lack of hands.
Here is the bolster clamped into my high speed knife vise. I'm using 400 grit paper to smooth out the edges.
That's it for now. I will post more later. Thanks for staying with me.
It's time to get some bolsters made and shaped so that while the blade is in heat treat we can finish them up and avoid down time.
I had a couple of pieces of 416 stainless left over from some previous jobs I had done so I thought I would use them up. These arent exactly the same size so I will need to grind them into shape.
I use a drop of gorilla glue to hold the two pieces together while I grind them. This will keep them perfectly aligned and they can easily be separated with a little persuasion.
You can see how the edges dont match up.
I'm using an old 80 grit belt to do the initial grinding. The coarse grit will get them even without heating them up too much. I dont worry about the heat for the metal's sake, but they sure can get hard to hold onto when they warm up.
After a little grinding I have them evened up.
Now we move to a finer grit belt to smooth out the edges a little. I'm not going for finish smooth here, I am just going to take the previous grind marks out and make it just a little smoother.
There, they are even and somewhat smooth. On to the next step.
I am going to use a trick I picked up from a fellow knife maker when I first started making knives. To hold the pieces of bolster where I want them on the blade I will use some carpet tape. It's relatively inexpensive and comes in different adhesive grades. I just grabbed some off the shelf at my local hardware store, I never paid much attention to what the adhesive hold was because I only need to have it hold long enought to mark the blade where I want my holes.
Here's a shot of the stuff. It comes in a roll and is double sided.
I always clean the surfaces of the parts I am going to tape together. First the bolsters and then later I will do the same thing with the blade.
You can see in the picture I already cut a piece of tape off the roll and have it sitting on the painters tape roll waiting to be applied.
It doesnt have to be pretty..which is a good thing because it can be difficult to stay exactly where you want it. It wants to stick to your fingers as much as the knife.
From here, we move to the drill press. Using the holes drilled in the knife blade we will transfer those same holes to the bolsters.
I drill through the bolster, then place a pin in the hole that I just drilled and then move to the next hole. After drilling the second hole I place another pin in that hole and move on to the last one. Even though I have the tape holding them together, there is still some wiggle left in the adhesion and it can be enough to throw your hole alignment off. The pins assure me that the correlation between the blade holes and the bolster holes remains constant. In the previous picture you can see that I have already drilled one hole and have it pinned and am drilling the next one.
It's really difficult to do some of this stuff and get decent pictures so please forgive my picture taking process.
Here the bolster is after drilling all the holes. Note the pins laying beside it on the bench. I always have a bunch of cut off's laying around just for this kind of thing.
Those pins were cut from a long piece of 1/8" brass rod that you can pick up from your local hardware store. They dont cost much and they also make great handle pins as well. They have brass rod in a variety of sizes.
The next thing I want to do is cut the forward face of the bolsters. This is an area that you have a little freedom in the way you want the bolster face to appear. I believe it makes a big difference in how the knife looks based on what shape the bolster takes on. It's kind of like putting mag wheels on dads car. The wheels make all the difference.
In this case I have determined to follow our original design and cut them angular and have the lower face follow the plunge line in the knife blade.
Once you have the bolsters cut you want to do a little rounding on the edges. I like to push the platen back on my grinder and use what is called a slack belt approach. Doin it this way allows the belt to contour to a roundness, and that's what I'm after.
I didnt get any pictures of the grinding process due to a lack of hands.
Here is the bolster clamped into my high speed knife vise. I'm using 400 grit paper to smooth out the edges.
That's it for now. I will post more later. Thanks for staying with me.
whitetailbowhunter
Expert
Very cool thread! thanks for sharing the process!
Today I got this wild idea that I was going to add a spanish notch to the blade. I'm not exactly why it's called a spanish notch or what it's original intention was. Perhaps there is someone else who can shed some light on this, but for my purposes, I add this notch to put a gap between the sharpened edge of the knife and the ground beveled edge of the ricasso. That way when you go to sharpen it...say on a sharpening stone, you arent constantly running the ricasso edge into the stone.
That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Traditionally I would wait until the blade is heat treated and then I would add a small spanish notch just before I sharpen the knife.
I decided to go a little fancy, and it would be extremely difficult to add the type of notch I wanted after heat treatment.
So I begin by using a center punch and dimpling the spot I want the center of my notch to be.
Here's a close up of the dimple. I dont want you to get the idea that I think you are stupid, but for those of you wondering why I dimpled the blade, it is so that my drill bit will not wander when I go to drill the hole in the blade. Remember, this hole is going to be on a sloped edge of the knife and any wandering drill marks I make I will have to smooth out by hand with sand paper...I'm much too lazy for something like that.
So I take it over to my drill press and first drill a 1/8" hole. It didnt look right so I went a little bigger.
I take the blade back to the drill press and using a countersink bit, I add a bit of chamfer to the hole to reduce stress risers during heat treat.
I used some blue tape to protect the finish on the blade from flying pieces of metal, but I pulled the tape back for the picture.
I want to open the hole up to the edge of the blade for an artistic look...or whatever.
So I use a very small round file to open it up a little.
Now it looks like this.
I didnt like it, so I opened it up a little more with a flat file.
...and it looks like this. I'm happy...for the moment so I guess I'll leave it alone before I mess it up. I can take metal away all day long, but I have a hard time putting it back.
Thanks for looking.
That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Traditionally I would wait until the blade is heat treated and then I would add a small spanish notch just before I sharpen the knife.
I decided to go a little fancy, and it would be extremely difficult to add the type of notch I wanted after heat treatment.
So I begin by using a center punch and dimpling the spot I want the center of my notch to be.
Here's a close up of the dimple. I dont want you to get the idea that I think you are stupid, but for those of you wondering why I dimpled the blade, it is so that my drill bit will not wander when I go to drill the hole in the blade. Remember, this hole is going to be on a sloped edge of the knife and any wandering drill marks I make I will have to smooth out by hand with sand paper...I'm much too lazy for something like that.
So I take it over to my drill press and first drill a 1/8" hole. It didnt look right so I went a little bigger.
I take the blade back to the drill press and using a countersink bit, I add a bit of chamfer to the hole to reduce stress risers during heat treat.
I used some blue tape to protect the finish on the blade from flying pieces of metal, but I pulled the tape back for the picture.
I want to open the hole up to the edge of the blade for an artistic look...or whatever.
So I use a very small round file to open it up a little.
Now it looks like this.
I didnt like it, so I opened it up a little more with a flat file.
...and it looks like this. I'm happy...for the moment so I guess I'll leave it alone before I mess it up. I can take metal away all day long, but I have a hard time putting it back.
Thanks for looking.
And now a little more work on the bolsters.
I'm going to clean up the inside surface, the surface that contacts the knife blade. If you remember I used some gorilla glue to hold the bolsters together. Well that has to go, and the surface needs to be smoothed and flatened.
I pin the bolster to a piece of wood, inside surface facing out.
This way I have somethng to hold onto while I am holding it against the grinder.
I start with a 400 grit belt.
This shot shows the grinder running.
Here's how it looks after cleaning it up.
Now we get out our trusty old granit slab. I spray some adhesive on the block so sandpaper will stick to it and then place the sandpaper on it. This block will give me a flat even surface to flatten the bolster surface.
The picture shows me sanding on a piece of 600 grit sandpaper. I keep sanding and changing the grit until I get to 1500 grit.
Now I'm going to go ahead and countersink the bolster mounting holes in the knife tang. I have a few different countersink bits, this small one is real handy with smaller holes. I use blue painters tape to protect the blade surface while I do this.
And using the countersink...
Now, I am going to prepare the bolster assembly for mounting to the blade.
I have never done this before so I am in uncharted territory here.
I grabbed a few pieces that I am going to use for this. A couple of pieces of 3/8" thick black G10, and a couple pieces of .05" 410 stainless steel.
After I cut each of the pieces I go through the flattening process again with each piece. They each need to be flat so there are no gaps when we put them together.
Here I am hand sanding a piece of the G10.
Now that we are done flatening out the parts I clean the granit slab with some simple green. I need this thing to be clean and smooth at all times.
After flattening all of the pieces, I mount the bolsters to a small knife jig I made to do this with. I used three #6 machine screws and nuts to go through the 1/8" holes. It is a snug fit so I brushed them each against the belt of the belt grinder at low speed.
I then put a drop of gorilla glue on the back of the bolster, then the piece of G10, another drop of gorilla glue and then the stainless.
Here's a picture of them all stacked up.
I'm going to wait 24 hours to be sure that the glue sets up nice and tight.
Tomorrow we will proceed towards getting the bolster assembly done and doing the final blade shape in the handle area before we do the heat treat.
I'm going to clean up the inside surface, the surface that contacts the knife blade. If you remember I used some gorilla glue to hold the bolsters together. Well that has to go, and the surface needs to be smoothed and flatened.
I pin the bolster to a piece of wood, inside surface facing out.
This way I have somethng to hold onto while I am holding it against the grinder.
I start with a 400 grit belt.
This shot shows the grinder running.
Here's how it looks after cleaning it up.
Now we get out our trusty old granit slab. I spray some adhesive on the block so sandpaper will stick to it and then place the sandpaper on it. This block will give me a flat even surface to flatten the bolster surface.
The picture shows me sanding on a piece of 600 grit sandpaper. I keep sanding and changing the grit until I get to 1500 grit.
Now I'm going to go ahead and countersink the bolster mounting holes in the knife tang. I have a few different countersink bits, this small one is real handy with smaller holes. I use blue painters tape to protect the blade surface while I do this.
And using the countersink...
Now, I am going to prepare the bolster assembly for mounting to the blade.
I have never done this before so I am in uncharted territory here.
I grabbed a few pieces that I am going to use for this. A couple of pieces of 3/8" thick black G10, and a couple pieces of .05" 410 stainless steel.
After I cut each of the pieces I go through the flattening process again with each piece. They each need to be flat so there are no gaps when we put them together.
Here I am hand sanding a piece of the G10.
Now that we are done flatening out the parts I clean the granit slab with some simple green. I need this thing to be clean and smooth at all times.
After flattening all of the pieces, I mount the bolsters to a small knife jig I made to do this with. I used three #6 machine screws and nuts to go through the 1/8" holes. It is a snug fit so I brushed them each against the belt of the belt grinder at low speed.
I then put a drop of gorilla glue on the back of the bolster, then the piece of G10, another drop of gorilla glue and then the stainless.
Here's a picture of them all stacked up.
I'm going to wait 24 hours to be sure that the glue sets up nice and tight.
Tomorrow we will proceed towards getting the bolster assembly done and doing the final blade shape in the handle area before we do the heat treat.
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